Things are getting a little strange out there. The big deal today was to be the forces of good (Antifa) battling against the forces of evil (the Alt-Right better known as White Supremacy) in a dramatic confrontation. All fine, except that the Alt-Right could only come up with 24 White Supremacists and the whole thing was more or less a flop. The problem, of course, is that Conservatives are not White Supremacists, and the urgent wish of the Left to make those on the Right into racists (which they are not) just doesn’t work.

Abraham Lincoln, who was the first Republican president, freed the slaves, won the Civil War. The Southern Democrats, the party who imported slaves, established slavery as a way of life, to work Southern plantations, and intended to establish slavery throughout America. Democrats have been trying to live down their connection to the Confederacy ever since, and the latest iteration is the attempt to turn Republicans into White Supremacists and Racists, with no basis in fact. They were sure that electing the first African–American President, absolved them from any claims of racism.

CNN, stung by President Trump’s calling them “the enemy of the people,” and talking constantly about “fake news”roused up the far-left Boston Globe which in turn, has signed on some 128 establishment news outlets for a coordinated editorial attack against President Trump, scheduled for August 16. Which is the day after the 73rd Anniversary of VJ Day, and the end of World War II. The theory is that on August 16, some 128 strongly worded op-eds will run to attempt to convince readers into believing that criticism of the media is “unacceptable” and should not be allowed.

There’s a small problem though. Record numbers of Americans consider the news media to be “immoral,” “inaccurate,” and “biased”, according to Pew Research. A plurality of Americans, 42 percent, said that the press was “immoral”, 32 percent thought reporters were “not professional” and 31 percent thought they “don’t care about how good a job they do”. A record high of 63 percent thought reporters were “politically biased in their reporting.”

According to the Harvard Harris poll, 65 percent of voters believe there is a lot of fake news in the mainstream media. That number includes 80% Republicans, 60% Independents and 53 % Democrats. Eighty-four percent of voters said it is hard to know what news to believe online.

The American public’s trust in the media in 2016 has fallen to its lowest point since at least 1972, according to a new Gallup poll released Wednesday. Only 32 percent of Republicans had confidence in the media in 2015, and whose confidence dropped to 14 percent in 2016. Gallup began asking respondents whether they had trust and confidence in the media in 1972. The drop in media trust and confidence was also apparent among both young and old respondents, according to the study. 2016 is the first time in 15 years that confidence in the media among Americans 50 and older fell below 40 percent. Perhaps they might want to postpone their editorial attack on Trump until a point when somebody out there actually believes in the mainstream media.

The New York Times, desperately seeking dirt on Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, did a FOIA request for the emails of Brett Kavanaugh’s wife, who is a city official in a Washington suburb, and finding nothing that could create any embarrassment shrugged and said, “We had to try.” (His wife? why?)

Now the folks at Pro-Publica, an explicitly leftist media outlet are asking people to scour their smart phone pictures in case any one caught Brett Kavanaugh at a Washington Nationals baseball game sitting with Lee Harvey Oswald or someone else disreputable.

Shocking. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh accrued as much as $200,000 in debt, buying tickets to Washington Nationals baseball games. Kavanaugh would go to games with a “handful” of friends who reimbursed him for the ticket, and the debts have been paid off. Who did Kavanaugh buy tickets for? How did they reimburse him? Was this properly disclosed? And how was all of this treated for tax purposes? Pro-Publica wants pictures to see who he was sitting with.

There has never been an American President who has been attacked so steadily and so viciously from the moment of his inauguration until today. The press has mostly not managed to cover events and accomplishments truthfully and without prejudice. Some 128 snarky editorials on Thursday is probably not going to change the minds of Americans.

If you listen carefully to the Democrats (you don’t have to listen a lot—just pay attention when you do) you will learn what they are up to. Listen to Nancy Pelosi, for example. Appearing on MSNBC, host Johnathan Capeheart said “There are a lot of people out there who are saying the Democrats have no message…the Democrats don’t know what they’re for, they’re against President Trump but they don’t know what they’re for.”

“Democrats are for the people. Democrats are for the people” she responded. Yes, we were told a few weeks back that would be the Democrats’ new slogan. Pelosi clearly got the message. “It means we are for the people having lower medicare costs, reducing the costs of prescription drugs. Democrats are for bigger paychecks by building the infrastructure of America, creating good paying jobs.” Unfortunately, Democrats simply do not understand the free market. Lowering medicare costs means either raising taxes,(which Pelosi has already said would be one of the first things Democrats would do when they get back in charge) or reducing benefits. The Baby Boomers are retiring and simply in their huge numbers, raising the cost of medicare. Black employment and Hispanic employment are the highest in history, so I don’t know why she would think that “infrastructure” (magic word for Dems) would improve on that.

She added that “Trump’s whole thing is ‘Make America White Again’.

“We’re going backward, and the president with all of his statements is the master of the dog whistle. Everything he has done, whether it’s taking babies out of the arms of their moms, whether it’s issues that relate to health care in our country, access to services and the rest is — his whole thing is ‘Make America White Again.’ That’s his thing. He can say a nice thing today in a tweet, but the fact is his actions speak louder than his words.”

There is pretty flimsy evidence. “Taking babies out of the arms of their mothers” has been the law in the Bush administration, in the Obama administration, and the president has sworn to uphold the law. You remember that all the cases of children in cages were taken during the Obama administration. Wanting to build a wall, the Democrats think, can be portrayed as trying to keep brown people out, rather than what it is: welcoming legal immigrants, and keeping illegals who have sneaked across the border with drugs, MS-13 killers, and people who will commit vicious crimes—out. Too many Americans have been killed by illegal immigrants. Then Dems try to add the travel ban on countries with high terrorist rates, to pretend it’s a ban on race or religion, assuming that Americans don’t know that the terrorism of ISIS and others is the result of an interpretation of radical Islam that demands that all either submit to Islam or be killed.

It is quite clear to any sane observer that there is not a racist bone in the Trump body. Unemployment for Blacks and Hispanics is the lowest in U.S. history, and well paying employment the highest in history. I have no idea where they are trying to dredge up make America white from. Some of that comes out of the black-studies college courses, the SPLC tried to promote the idea to encourage rioters at Middlebury College, it was reported. You have probably noticed that shrieks of “white supremacy” seems to have become a fad among the illiterate. Whenever they can find a so-called “white supremacist” they make a very big deal of it.

The Lefties at Facebook and Twitter have banned Alex (Alec?) Jones, who is some kind of a kook ,for “hate speech,” but let’s say he is not exactly a Republican in good standing. I don’t know who he is.

Nancy Pelosi also accused Mitch McConnell of being “racist.”

Let me remind you that when the Republicans took power when President Obama was president of the United States, what Mitch McConnell said is the most important thing we can do is to make sure he does not succeed. If that wasn’t a racist statement — that is unthinkable. We worked with President Bush although we had our differences. You don’t make a statement to make sure the president doesn’t succeed. Why did he say that? Why did he say that?

Possibly because we were learning that President Obama clearly was a leftist whose first act was to pull the troops out of Iraq, which ruined the painful progress made there, because the war was unpopular. And it was soon made clear that President Obama’s aims were very far left indeed and opposed to everything Republicans believe in.

Clearly that is the ordained Democrat propaganda effort. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation” to say that President Donald Trump had made a “concerted effort” to use race to divide people.

What I think I’m most concerned about with this president is his penchant to divide us, to attack people because they’re immigrants, to attack people because of their religion, to attack minorities, to use vulgar language to describe countries where people come who might be Latino or African. There is a concerted effort that he is been engaged in to divide people including dividing based on race. Nowhere was that more obvious, nowhere, than in the aftermath of Charlottesville.

A majority of our own Hispanic citizens do not want the DACA “kids” to get amnesty. Left-wing media outlets Vox and ProPublica are defending MS-13 gangs as regular kids who are “working after-school jobs, living with their parents. They get around Long Island on bicycles because they can’t afford cars.” That’s a frightening pretense.

The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS.org) has reported on the Trump administration’s war on MS-13, the Salvadorian gang, reviewing more than 500 cases of MS-13 arrested nationwide, as a very serious threat to public safety. Their resurgence is directly connected to the illegal arrival and resettlement of more than 300,000 Central American youths and families that has continued unabated for six years, and to a de-prioritization of immigration enforcement in the interior of the country by the Obama administration. Do read the whole thing. There’s a map showing where Mara Salvatrucha operates. Over 207 MS-13 members have been charged with murder. Beyond that, 100 with conspiracy/racketeering, sex trafficking, sexual assaults, drug trafficking and extortion. Machetes are a favorite weapon, for chopping people up.

This is the Democrat program attacking Trump that they intend to run on. Just watch, you will see Democrats repeating the prescribed talking points, “dog whistles” and all. Sick.

Last Thursday, the EPA and the DOT announced a new proposed rule on automobile fuel efficiency standards. The Obama administration’s rule promulgated in 2012 was supposed to achieve a “corporate average” by the car companies for their new vehicles of 54.5 mpg by 2025. Instead it increased the cost of automobiles and the cost of gas.

The American people apparently are not capable of choosing how fuel-efficient they want their new cars to be. Fuel efficiency is not the number one issue in a car purchase. The most popular vehicles in recent years have been pickup trucks which are not particularly fuel efficient. The Ford F-150 is rated at 16 mpg city and 22 mpg highway — nowhere near 54.3 mpg. The new rule will end the ongoing increases in CAFE standards after 2020 applicable to new vehicles sold.

A report from the Environmental Protection Agency has found that including ethanol into the U.S. gasoline supply is wreaking havoc on the atmosphere and on the soil.

In a study titled “Biofuels and the Environment: The Second Triennial Report to Congress,” the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) determined that ethanol derived from corn and soybeans is causing serious harm to the environment. Water, soil and air quality were all found to be adversely affected by biofuel mandates.

“Evidence since enactment of [the Energy Independence and Security Act] suggests an increase in acreage planted with soybeans and corn, with strong indications from observed changes in land use that some of this increase is a consequence of increased biofuel production,” read a portion of the 159-page report.

Other findings from the study show: More ethanol from corn has resulted in greater nitrogen oxide emissions, greater demand for biofuel feedstock has contributed to harmful algae blooms, and increased irrigation has placed greater stress on water sources.

But climate change has nothing whatsoever to do with fuel mileage rules. No rules at all would have no effect on the climate, nor would extremely severe rules. No effect. None. As Holman Jenkins said in the Wall Street Journal:

If climate activists really think any reduction in CO2 is infinitely valuable and cost vs. benefit doesn’t matter, why are they still exhaling?

Then why did Mr. Obama draft such a restrictive fuel economy number? “his flunkies, as documented in a House investigation, simply were looking for a impressive-sounding number to serve the administration’s political interests at the time. The rules were jiggered to help U.S. auto makers sell pickups and SUV’s so Mr. Obama could claim a successful auto bailout.” Under Trump rules, or under Obama rules, the effect of fuel mileage rules or of adding ethanol to the gasoline would be nothing at all.

The New York Times recently published an article claiming absolutely that “global greening” from carbon dioxide emissions would be terrible for the planet, and has been a negligible benefit if any, to crops.

Dr. Patrick Moore took issue with the claim that CO2 has provided only a “small” benefit to crops, noting that millions of plants and crops were grown in greenhouses where CO2 is pumped in to enhance growth.

Try to tell a greenhouse grower that the effect of higher CO2 is “small”. They will laugh you out of the room with their 25-80% gain in yield. The @nytimes has become a bad joke. 800-1200 ppm CO2 is optimal. It has been lower during Pleistocene than any time in Earth history.

People who point out what the science says, are usually referred to as “climate deniers” as if they were denying that climate change is a fact. The climate is always changing, we have hot years and cold years, and summer and winter.

Drastic, debilitating changes take place only in the computer programs of scientists who put more faith in their faulty computer programs than in what is actually being measured across the world. And more than that:

It was at a news conference in Brussels in Early February 2015, that Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nation’s Framework Convention on Climate Change admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity—but to destroy capitalism.

This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.

“Climate Alarmists” (the term for mostly Democrats who can’t be bothered to read the science and are sure the Earth is in it’s last days because of global warming) new thing has been to sue the hated fossil fuel companies (big and rich) to help to pay the city’s alleged costs of dealing with climate change. So far they are 2-0. You can easily guess the two cities involved — San Francisco and New York City. In June, Judge William H. Alsup for the Federal District Court in San Francisco dismissed a lawsuit against BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell, filed by San Francisco and Oakland.

Now Federal Judge John F. Keenan of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York dismissed New York City”s lawsuit against the same five major oil companies intended to force them to help pay the city’s alleged costs of dealing with climate change. In his 23-page decision Judge Keenan wrote that climate change must be addressed by the executive branch and Congress, not by the courts.

Although climate change “is a fact of life,” Keenan wrote, “the serious problems caused thereby are not for the judiciary to ameliorate. Global warming and solutions thereto must be addressed by the two other branches of government.”

Keenan ruled New York’s state and federal common law claims were disallowed under the Clean Air Act, saying it would be “illogical” and violate U.S. Supreme Court precedents to allow the claims under state common law “when courts have found that these matters are areas of federal concern that have been delegated to the executive branch as they require a uniform, national solution … [and] the Clean Air Act displaces the City’s claims seeking damages for past and future domestic greenhouse gas emissions brought under federal common law.”

In addition, Keenan determined NYC’s lawsuit was unjustified because the city itself contributed carbon dioxide emissions and benefited from fossil fuel use.

Despite two courts saying clearly that climate policy is soley the business of the legislative and executive branches of the federal government, New York City and Oakland and San Francisco say they plan to appeal thier cases’ dismissals. A day after Keenan’s dismissal, Baltimore sued oil companies for climate change in Maryland state court and Rhode Island sued in state court to recover the cost of climate change. This is, of course just a case of an attempted shakedown of companies assumed to have deep pockets. Cities don’t mind frittering away taxpayers money — there’s always more where that came from, they can raise money taxing drinking straws and save the sea life as well.

I don’t know what these cities consider the “costs” of global warming. Perhaps it’s banning plastic bags at the grocery store, or paying for electricity from wind turbines and buying solar panels to put on city buildings? But they should be charged for wasting taxpayer money on “renewable energy” that costs more than fossil fuel energy, and provides less energy. Solar energy and wind turbines are causing “energy poverty” in Germany and other European countries. There is no law against governments at any level being stupid. You have to vote them out.It is Your Responsibility.

It’s hard to know what the Left really believes. Nancy Pelosi has announced that as soon as Democrats return to power, they will end all this “tax cuts for the rich” nonsense, and raise taxes. If they can just convince everybody that the tax cuts only went to the very rich and CEOs of big corporations, then they will return to power and have more money to spend. Republican tax-cuts are what is called “supply-side economics”. When you free people up, and let them keep more of their own money, then they have the money to start their own businesses, invest and grow the economy. When the economy is growing,business expands and grows and hires. Works every time. Here are some facts:

President Trump is the “Jobs President” after 8 years of Obama’s failure. The unemployment rate is at a record low. It hit 3.8% in May, a record low. The unemployment rate of Latinos is at an all-time low. African-American unemployment is also at an all-time low.

A record number of Americans are working full-time. Almost 130 million Americans now have full-time jobs. This is six million more than the previous record.

The number of jobs available is at a record high. Job openings are ranging from 6.6 to 6.8 million between March and May —meaning there are as many jobs out there as unemployed Americans. In many cases, employers are waiving their usual requirements to training or retraining workers themselves. Congress is in the process of passing legislation supporting community college and technical training. A good time for preparing students for high paying jobs and avoiding the mountains of debt that many millennials face. When employers have a hard time finding qualified workers, salaries go up.

President Trump is keeping his commitment to the forgotten blue collar worker and to the older workers in middle America. As a result the economy grew at a robust 4.1 percent in the second quarter.

I often mention that the government has no money of its own. By that, I mean that every promise of “free stuff,” or “free college,”or “free health care, or “guaranteed jobs”or “subsidized housing” is not paid for by the government, which has no money of it’s own, but by you, the taxpayer, with, added on, the cost of a new bureau and a new bunch of bureaucrats to administer the new benefits. But that is not the end of it. We cannot expect the new bureau and the new bureaucrats to administer all this stuff from the nation’s capitol. Each of the fifty states will need a new bureau and a new bunch of bureaucrats to actually disperse all these wonderful new benefits, who also require salaries and pensions and benefits. Which means that the states will need new bureaus and bureaucrats. Unfortunately that is not the end of it, because all the extra taxes use up a lot of the money that was going to new businesses and new ideas., and slowly, the economy responds by slowing down, which means more people out of work and needing help, so the cycle repeats.

A while back when the Democrats were promising “free stuff” Nancy Pelosi informed Americans that now, with all these free benefits, people would be free to follow their dreams and paint and write and play music in all their new free time.